The Final Destination
Director: David R. Ellis
Writer: Eric Bress
Sequel to: Final Destination, Final Destination 2, Final Destination 3
Cast: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella, Justin Welborn, Stephanie Honoré, Lara Grice, Jackson Walker, Phil Austin
Seen on: 18.9.2024

Content Note: racism

Plot:
Nick (Bobby Campo) goes to a racetrack with his friends, even though they don’t seem actually all that interested, except for Hunt (Nick Zano). Things do get interesting in a horrifying way, though, when Nick has a vision of a horrible accident that takes out quite a few of the spectators. With his reaction to that vision, he not only causes chaos, but also a few people to leave the track – just before the accident actually happens. But then the survivors start dying, too.

I, too, had a vision. A vision of the (further) sequels really sucking. But like the characters in the film, I didn’t manage to escape my fate, it being me watching all the Final Destination movies. Fortunately, I will have soon made it through. To get to the point: The Final Destination was not good.

The film so far haven’t been great overall, and in particular, they haven’t been great regarding representation. But by now, we have reached a point in the series where Black people are almost like the Highlander: there can only ever be one. One man in particular (there were, in fact, two Black men in the second film, but they never shared the screen). Which makes the sudden appearance of racists in this film almost jarring, especially because they are the absolute cartoonish kind of racists, easy for the “good white people” to distance themselves from. And the Black dude (Mykelti Williamson) here is so good, pure and wholesome, it’s equally cartoonish and has nothing to do with being a person anymore. In any case, it’s frustrating to say the least.

As you can see from the movie poster, this film hit cinemas in 3D. That means includes the most 2009 animated dream sequences that really haven’t aged particularly well, and probably already looked cheesy back then, too. They even extend these kinds of animations to the opening credits, breaking with the time-honored tradition of the films so far to make the opening credits environmental storytelling. Even apart from the animation, those dreams were almost as bad as the photographs of the last installment in their gimmickiness.

The characters were difficult to root for, too. I mean, Nick was pretty much the standard white boy protagonist milquetoast nothing of a character, but the fact that he was friends with Hunt absolutely disqualifies him as a human being. The others were barely there as persons, though the film got lucky that Shantel VanSanten is cute enough and brought her role to life enough to give us at least a little something to hold on to.

Overall, I’m pretty much over these films. I will watch the last one just for curiosity’s and completionism’s sake, but then I will pretend that only the first one ever got made, I think.

Summarizing: sigh.